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Newsstand: April 28, 2010
lllustration by Clayton Hanmer/Torontoist.
Back in February, we found a little video on Facebook of a pigeon riding the subway and promptly published it here, where it dominated traffic like, well, like a pigeon on a subway. In the months since, the Star showed the video to Cornell neurobiologist Charles Walcott, who says that the bird looks like a regular commuter who knows its way around underground. “It may have been a fluke the first time (it rode the subway), and then the pigeon said, ‘Well, that’s a neat way to get around,'” he said. At least somebody has happy thoughts about the TTC.
On that train of thought, new details are out on the TTC’s prototype subway cars, which were supposed to tested this past winter but have yet to be completed. As we noted in January, the delay is due to a parts supplier going bankrupt, and not any fault of the TTC or Bombardier, which holds the $710 million contract to produce thirty-nine of the trains. It’s just been reported that the prototype vehicle will arrive no earlier than August but could be in service by the end of 2010. As well as more passenger space, the trains sport thirty-six intercoms and some kind of antibacterial film on the doorside poles. Also, the train’s cars are all connected without walls, so riders can use them as a bowling alley spread out to fill it evenly. The trains will run on the Yonge line, whose older cars will be redeployed to the Bloor line.
A nineteen-year-old man ran into a streetcar while crossing the road last night. It appears that he was distracted by his MP3 player while rushing across Spadina at Baldwin, when he hit the side of a moving streetcar. The man was taken to hospital with serious head and chest injuries.
We may never know what really happened in the MaRS Centre yesterday morning. The research facility at U of T was evacuated and hazmat teams were sent in after a dangerous chemical leak in the building. Or so they say. We’ve watched enough X-Files to realize that the truth goes way deeper, but the official story is that the lockdown was caused by one hundred grams of picric acid that had crystallized, becoming potentially explosive. Students and staff were temporarily placed into TTC buses parked outside, for shelter, not to have their memories of the incident erased by government agents. By 11:30 a.m., any trace of something out of the ordinary had disappeared.
Mike Smith, formerly of NOW Magazine, will be the spokesperson for Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone’s mayoral campaign. Here’s hoping he keeps writing pieces like this when he crosses the line between journalist and PR professional.